Day 8

Inks: Copic markers (warm greys)

This drawing was done straight onto fabric with Copic markers. I’ll let you in on a secret: the fabric was taken from an old supermarket shopping bag that the handle had broken off. It was really fun to draw on; I might try it as a substrate for a fabric collage later. A cup of tea used to be my go-to comfort drink, but I’ve recently stopped taking sugar in it and it’s just not the same any more. Here’s a melancholy monument to my lost brew.

Day 9

Inks: Sakura pens, black Faber-Castell pen, white gel pen

Well, this didn’t go at all like I wanted it to. But looking back at it, it’s not too bad. I used my Sakura pens, in the hope that they would show up on black paper, but the only ones that did weren’t the right colours. Oddly, I think the best thing about it is the shadow.
The Japanese symbols possibly say Sakura, if Wikipedia can be trusted. Just to be clear, that’s the pens, not the flower. It’s not a cherry blossom. Not entirely sure what it is, I found it on my way home.

Day 10

I may have been less than enthusiastic today. And a little bit vacant. I don’t really have much to say about this one – I just wanted something to draw that was quite structural, that I could do some shading on. I prefer the writing on this to my previous attempt at calligraphy.

Day 11

Today’s experiment was, “can I use masking fluid through a stencil?” Answer: yes. (Top tip – don’t be an impatient muppet, let it dry properly before the next stage). Anyway, I’d had enough of this drawing business and wanted to throw some colours around. Brusho is bright and exciting and you never know quite what you are going to get (for those who haven’t used it, it comes as powders which are activated by water, so you can sprinkle it on the page, spritz it with a spray bottle and watch the magic happen).
The stencil was simply cut out of copier paper, after having done a brief Google image search and sketching a quick outline. I finished it off with a few pen lines and coloured the beak with an orange felt-tip.

Day 12

A while ago I got inspired by something I read in a book and did a number of collage pieces using ink glaze; ink mixed with a glaze medium. I wanted to have another go at that. I have a box full of old paper bags, with various designs, and decided to use torn pieces from them to create an abstract design. Then I went over the collage with ink glaze in places, added a few ink spatters, and finished off with some oil pastel. I wasn’t particularly happy with the result. The downside of doing a piece every day is that you don’t have a lot of time, particularly with mixed media where it’s all about building up the layers, and you have to let it dry in between. There weren’t enough layers in this piece. The composition’s not bad, but the finish looks messy and it doesn’t quite come together somehow.

Day 13

I decided to have another play with my new Distress Oxide inks. With the howling gale outside it was starting to feel quite wintery, so I dug out a snowflake stamp and some clear embossing powder. The ink is very water reactive, so it’s very easy to apply a watery layer and dab off with some kitchen towel, to get interesting texture and colour variance. I built up a few layers like this, adding more embossed snowflakes and a less diluted colour wash each time. Finally I used some torn paper masks to add some lines of hills at the bottom, using ink pads and a stencil brush.

Day 14

I wanted to do another fabric piece today. Partly this was to see how the ink behaved on fabric, and I got some nice effects by dripping ink straight on to the fabric and letting it spread out. But then I bit off more than I could chew by starting to do some embroidery, which I clearly didn’t have time for. So I finished it off with some stamps. This actually looks better close up. That’s the thing about textiles, they’re tactile and hard to appreciate from photographs.

What I’ve learnt from this week is that I need to do less complicated pieces, because I just don’t have time to get a finished piece looking the way I want. I’ll try to focus more on techniques next week, and just do some quick experiments that might give me inspiration for a bigger piece later on.